Category: Good Writing

Gaza Update

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Well, there was a 3 hour truce to deliver supplies, and then the fighting started up again, and the Israeli cabinet has OK’d continued conflict.

On a brighter note, things seem to be developing diplomatically, with a lot of people on both sides in Cairo.

Finally, if you think that the Middle East can make you cynical, you haven’t ever truly experienced real cynicism. Just check out the War Nerd’s latest, it’s on Gaza, and it makes everyone else that I’ve ever heard of sound like Little Orphan Annie.

To paraphrase Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee, that’s isn’t cynicism, this is cynicism

Your Daily Dose of Batsh%$ Insane (Israel/Palestine Edition)

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In the process of googling things about the blow-up in Gaza, I came across an opinion piece in the the Grauniad* that I found rather interesting by Seth Freedman.

Well before quoting someone’s OP/Ed, I always check out their other articles, and/or Wiki them, just to make sure that they are not raving moonbats.

It is a policy that I wholeheartedly recommend.

In any case, it turns out that Mr. Freedman is not a raving moonbat, his opinions on the conflict seem to be pretty much in line with the Guardian‘s editorial stance.

He is “in country”, and writes rather a lot about what is going on there, and his “beat” seems to involve a lot of writing about what is going on with the various NGOs out there.

So, I’m perusing his articles, and I come across one that he wrote just over a week ago, “Aid workers reveal their deep malaise in ‘western-style gym’ battle,” and I gave it a read.

It appears that there is a mailing list dedicated to discussing issues confronting employees of NGOs in the territories, and someone posted what should have been an innocuous question, “Is there a proper, western-style gym in Ramallah? If so, where is it?

The response from a sane human being should be some asking what the person wants from the gym. “Western-style,” could mean fancy machines, or mixed gender, or any other number of options.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, someone suggested that the request was racist, “You forgot to add: ‘where only white people go,’ so it can’t be ‘proper’ if not ‘western-style’? If you miss western styles that much, get your ass out of here and keep it in your western world.“

From that point, it devolved in a flame war lasting at least a week.

Too many people in this world take themselves way too seriously.

In any case, it is a very amusing read.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

The Genius of John Maynard Keynes

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As noted by FT columnist Martin Wolfe

I see three broad lessons.

The first, which was taken forward by Minsky, is that we should not take the pretensions of financiers seriously. “A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.” Not for him, then, was the notion of “efficient markets”.

The second lesson is that the economy cannot be analyzed in the same way as an individual business. For an individual company, it makes sense to cut costs. If the world tries to do so, it will merely shrink demand. An individual may not spend all his income. But the world must do so.

The third and most important lesson is that one should not treat the economy as a morality tale. In the 1930s, two opposing ideological visions were on offer: the Austrian; and the socialist. The Austrians – Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek – argued that a purging of the excesses of the 1920s was required. Socialists argued that socialism needed to replace failed capitalism, outright. These views were grounded in alternative secular religions: the former in the view that individual self-seeking behaviour guaranteed a stable economic order; the latter in the idea that the identical motivation could lead only to exploitation, instability and crisis.

Keynes’s genius – a very English one – was to insist we should approach an economic system not as a morality play but as a technical challenge. He wished to preserve as much liberty as possible, while recognising that the minimum state was unacceptable to a democratic society with an urbanised economy. He wished to preserve a market economy, without believing that laisser faire makes everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

(emphasis mine)

In fact, this may be the best message to economics professors out there: that reality matters more than your philosophy.

Cheney Admits to Engineering Outing of CIA Operative to FBI

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Ummmm…wow????

Legally, it may be a gray zone, because there is no evidence that he actually explicitly gave the order to out Valerie Plame, but Murray Waas, one of the better investigative journalist of my generation has gotten his hands on the notes from FBI interview with dick Cheney, and it’s very clear that he rewrote the talking points on the push-back on Joe Wilson’s OP/ED debunking the Niger-Iraq-Uranium claim in such a way as to make it nearly inevitable that Plame would be outed:

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

(emphasis mine)

Of course, I expect Cheney to be among those pardoned between January 15 and January 20, so it will amount to nothing.

The Nobel Prize Winner Sees the Big Picture

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Paul Krugman notes that it’s really very difficult to find meaningful differences between Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and business as usual in the financial markets:

The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation’s income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it’s not just a matter of money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other people’s money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.

He is right when he says that, we are “looking at now are the consequences of a world gone Madoff.”

More People Who Write (and Think) Better Than I am Able Too

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In this case, it’s Jonathan Schwarz of A Tiny Revolution:

There’s a rule of thumb for American politics that will never steer you wrong: if the Washington press corps worships a political figure and squeaks for decades on end about how he’s a Brave Man of Honor and Wisdom, that political figure is one of the most dangerous lying scumbags on earth.

I would only add that sometimes *cough* John McCain *cough* he’s also batsh%$ insane.

What Big Media Matt Says

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On Iraq:

The harsh reality is that this was not a noble undertaking done for good reasons. It was a criminal enterprise launched by madmen cheered on by a chorus of fools and cowards. And it’s seen as such by virtually everyone all around the world — including but by no means limited to the Arab world. But it’s impolitic to point this out in the United States, and it’s clear that even a president-elect who had the wisdom not to be suckered in by the War Fever of 2002 has no intention of really acting to marginalize the bad actors. Which, I think, makes sense for his political objectives. But if Americans want to play a constructive role in world affairs, it’s vitally important for us to get in touch with the reality of what the past eight years of US foreign policy have been and how they’re seen and understood by people who aren’t stirred by the shibboleths of American patriotism.

(emphasis mine)

I don’t want them marginalized. I want them imprisoned.

Joseph E. Stiglitz on Free Market Evangelicals

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Read his article, and you will understand that this is not a failure of regulation or legislation, but one of world view:

The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government should be minimal. Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, “I have found a flaw.” Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working.” “Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan said. The embrace by America—and much of the rest of the world—of this flawed economic philosophy made it inevitable that we would eventually arrive at the place we are today.

It’s also a very entertaining read.

Stephen Colbert is a Genius

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So, he shows Stephen Hayes from CNN, and says that for the economy, losing the auto industry would just be like losing a foot, but then he continues:

Right…it’s just a foot. If we had let the banking industry fail we would have lost our assholes.

2:50 on this vid

The Onion is a National Treasure

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I’m Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place

Oh, America. Eight years went by so fast, didn’t they? I feel like I hardly got to know you and methodically undermine everything you once stood for. But I guess all good things must come to an end, and even though you know I would love to stick around for another year or four—maybe privatize Social Security or get us into Iran—I’m afraid it’s time to go. But before I leave, let me say, from the bottom of my heart: I can’t think of another country I would’ve rather led to the brink of collapse.

Brilliant.

Governor Patterson, Appoint Elliot Spitzer to Replace Hillary Clinton

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It does a number of good things, the first is that he would clearly be a placeholder, and so we can allow the voters select a replacement in a special election in 2010.

The second is that Elliot Spitzer really understands the current financial mess, and how the current prescription, which involves even more bank consolidation, is just plain wrong.

His point is that if financial institutions are too big to fail, they are too big not to be broken up:

Two responses are possible: One is to accept the need for gigantic financial institutions and the impossibility of failure—and hence the reality of explicit government guarantees, such as Fannie and Freddie now have—but then to regulate the entities so heavily that they essentially become extensions of the government. To do so could risk the nimbleness we want from economic actors.

The better policy is to return to an era of vibrant competition among multiple, smaller entities—none so essential to the entire structure that it is indispensable.

What the Other Matt Said

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Matthew Yglesias again:

To go stronger here, it’s worth observing that absolutely integral to starting to achieve success in Iraq was the rolling strategic decision to abandon our main war aims. In particular, we’re now neither trying to create a strong Iraqi state, nor trying to create an Iraqi state that isn’t dominated by pro-Iranian forces, nor trying to create an Iraqi state that’s a base for American military power, nor especially trying to create a stable Iraqi democracy. I think all of those decisions were the right decisions, based in smart pragmatic thinking about Iraqi realities and American interests. But if we didn’t want to do that stuff, that we could have just not invaded in the first place. Which is exactly what we should have done!

(emphasis original)

Too true.

The War Nerd on Mumbai

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Trust Gary Brecher to cut to the chase:

So what you see here is something economists would understand as well or better than traditional military analysts. I hate to sound cold-blooded, putting it this way, but what happened is that Pakistan’s Islamists had a surplus of raw labor, and thought of a way to get it to a place where it maximized its global value in terms of pure blood and destruction.

It is remarkable just how badly Carter and Brezinski’s purchase of a civil war in Afghanistan in the 1970s has screwed up that entire region.

Go read the rest.

Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis.

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Full disclosure: I have not read Atlas Shrugged. I do not intend to do so, The Virtue of Selfishness in high school was enough unpleasantness for me.

All I have read is the Wiki, and a few excerpts.

That being said, this made me laugh to hard that I think that I broke something.

Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis.

BY JEREMIAH TUCKER
– – – –

1.

“Damn it, Dagny! I need the government to get out of the way and let me do my job!”

She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants … Did she know?

“I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun,” she said. “Don’t let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we’ll revitalize our country’s failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits.”

“Oh, no, I got out of that suckers’ game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management.”

“What?”

He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn’t betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. “Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I’m earning millions in interest off money I don’t even have.”

He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.

“There’s a whole world out there of byzantine financial products just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories into the ground! I hope they do! I’ve taken out more insurance on a single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When my old company finally tanks, I’ll make a cool $877 million.”

Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand. Yes, Hank … claim me … If we’re to win the battle against the leeches, we must get it on … right now … Don’t let them torture us for our happiness … or our billions.

He tore his eyes away.

…..

There is more, go read.

Republican Party Has Lost The Economist

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In an editorial, they call the ‘Phants, a Ship of fools, and lambast them for systematically becoming anti-idea and anti-thought over the past 30 years.

It’s a good read, and the last sentence, “Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too,” had me cleaning my screen.

While there is much wrong with the Republican party, they are correct that the anti-intellectual anti though bent of the modern Republican party is at the core of much of this.

It’s a good read.